Perhaps access to voting facilities was also a problem with their e-Voting trials. In order to cast a vote electronically; voters needed to receive a polling card.
The ability to receive the card through the mail on a timely basis and follow the instructions would be necessary to participate.
All voters in Norway receive a voting card in the mail, and I can assure you that the norwegian mail system is very reliable as well as the cards being sent out well in advance of the election.
Regarding the learning curve... Norwegians have been able to file the tax returns electronically for a number of years, and in 2012, approx 75 % of those who filed did it electronically. Also we have one of the worlds highest use of electronic banking (I have been physically to a bank exactly once during the last ten years, and my current bank does not even have such facilities. Everything is net based).
So basically, it is reasonable to assume that the results are as presented. Turnout is not due to lack of easy access to voting facilities.
It adds complexity, as it will be in addition to the manual voting system. There are no problems with keeping only the manual system, while it is impossible in the forseeable future to use only electronic voting.
paper voters have no way of verifying that either, you are simply talking nonsense.
When I vote, I pick a list for the party I vote for, and put it (unmarked) into the ballot box where it is mixed with a significant number of other similar lists. There is no way to track exactly what piece of paper I put in that box. So my vote is anonymous.
by the way increased turnout is not at all the benefit, you not only do know nothing about the system, you fail to grasp what democracy is about. if turnout is a matter of comfort or marketing, democracy is worth a crap.
The aim of this test was to measure if there would be an increased turnout. By the design criterium, the test was no success. As I did not create the design cirteria for the test, I can hardly be blamed if the test used irrelevant criteria?
Any system relies on a certain amount of trust, but a lot more people are involved in a paper ballot. The votes are counted locally, and all the numbers are available online. The paper ballots are kept in case there is a reason for a re.count.
That means to corrupt such a system an entity would need to control a significant number of people. That is a lot more difficult than to fix a centralized electronic system.
The goal of this test was to test technology and to check if easier access to voting would increase turnout. If you test somethig for a specific purpose, then surely accepting the outcome cannot be a problem?
As for the reason for the low turnout, that is a mixed issue. At least we can now assume that access to voting facilities is not one of the problems. As for the country in question, a few reasons may be a generally high standard of living combined with no major fundamental differences between the political blocks. (I live in that country, and my family all vote.)
There's also the political issues with voting machines
Just to clear this one up: In the Norwegian tests, there were no dedicated voting machines. The voters used their own computers, voting from home. Using dedicated voting machines instead of paper was never an option.
There are no voting machines involved, as the online voting was done from the voters own PC. There is already systems in place in Norway to ensure user authentication (used for filign tax returns etc...), so any issue would be with the central systems. In its simplest form, it is a question of trust.
The problem was that the overall turnout did not increase. So 38% of those who would have voted anyway chose to do it electronically. As developing and maintaining a complex system that is used every second year would be quite expensive, along with privacy issues etc., making it a little more convenent to vote is just not a good enough reason. At least not at this time.
To put it simple: There is a cost with no benefit.
The cost is real money, and the benefit would be increased turnout. Without an increased turnout, there is no benefit. The fact that some people who (most likely) are already voters use the online voting is not a reason to spend a lot of money on the system.
The fact that voters have no way of verifying that the vote is anonymous also contribute to the decision.
As most people live within a 10 minute walk form the polling stations, adding electronic voting is not really important at all.
Losing a day's or even an hour's data entry is not an option.
If you have that kind of requirements (less than an hour lost data), then you are not looking for just backup/archive. You are looking for a fully redundant storage system. In addition to the backup system, of course.
For reading, check up on backupentral.com, Symantec.com (Backup Exec/Netbackup) emc.com (Avamar, networker).
I once managed a Filemaker database server (v5), and it has a built in featuer to copy the database files for backup. Real simple. Cannot remember if the database had to be taken offline, as we had users only during normal working hours, but these days that should NOT be a requirement.
No. Most of the world are not on IPv6 yet. My ISP has only started making it available, and the (global) company I work does not even have a plan for IPv6.
That is true, but what I answered to was that the post used a specific example witout bothering to check the facts.
Using $1 per unit as an example when the actual fee is $0.05 misrepresents the facts, which needs to be pointed out.
When looking at a cost, you have to consider what the licensees get,
By paying a nominal sum per unit sold, the manufacturers gets access to an established market with more or less certain sales due to the widespread use of the technology. Is it not reasonable that hose who have in effect created a huge market for the product also get part of the profit?
I could understand the negativity if the license contributed significantly to the cost of the end product (which is the case for mobile phones), but when the license is so low that it does not really contribute much to the end cost, whaqt is the problem?.
For a cable it is 1% of the sales price (cheap cables) or less (not so cheap cables). For a TV, it is fractions of a percent. Even for a cheap unit like a chromecast unit (got one, it is too cheap not to get one), it is one seventh of a percent of the sales price. Hardly significant...
The "security" feature has a documented workaround, and is there because the components reading older versions have vulnerabilities. It si quite simple to define a folder as "safe" and move the documents there, or to define the folder where the documents are located as "safe". This feature has been ther esince Office 2003, and your IT support people should know this.
If your boss could not open ODF in MS Office, then maybe it is because Office open ODF files according to the standard. The problem is that most of the vendors using ODF have added extensions which are not (yet) part of the standard. Is that Microsofts fault?
When you are writing negatively about OOXML, at least get your facts correct. There is no "Do it like Excel 2007" in there. There are a few "do it like Office 95 Word", but those are only needed to correctly render a few minor formatting features on documents originally created in Word 95. How critical is it to ensure that every minor formatting detail from a document created more than ten years ago is correct?
As for your last paragraph: Even without the spec, you can get the content of any OOXML document. Any OOXML document is a zipped folder structure with the text stored as plain text with XML tags. No risk of losing access to the content. Quite an improvement compared to the old DOC/XLS formats, and for those who remember, the WordPerfect formats (yes, I have tried to decode it).
The return is completely disproportionate to the initial investment. How much do you think it cost to come up with the standard for the HDMI cable? How much do you think is being made worldwide if even $1.00 US is going for license fees?
But what if $0.05 is the fee per cable/unit? Because that is the actual license fee for HCMI. Why make up numbers when the actual numbers are available through a simple search? http://www.hdmi.org/manufactur...
Spend the money on a cheap proper projector and use one of the participants' laptop. Just as cheap and actually useful. Most people cannot be bothered to use sub.standard stuff.
Cheap flat HD TVs killed the projector market (if there ever was one). Putting a low resolution projector in a PC will not help.
If I need to view content from my PC, I use Chromecast (and there are probably dozens of this type of devices within a year). Simple and easy, and no need for a white wall to project on and to dim the room lights.
Your argument is based on the assumption that the price per channel reflect the cost of running it. It does not.
The income for a channel is based on what the market (subscribers, advertisers) will pay. The channel has to create its content based on that income. This basically means that in your scenario, if both viewers wanted only channel 1, they would pay half the cost.
Channel 2 would be without viewers, and would have the hard choice of either creating attractive content to get its viewer back, or simply close down.
There is no law in nature which says that all TV channels have to exist forever. Actually, a lot of them are not needed at all.
Anything from the 70's and the early 80's will work.
Some VAX computers (11/780 series) used 8" floppy to read the boot loader. OSes like VAX/VMS, RSX-11, RT-11 will read/write them. I also suspect that any old IBM computer/OS will read them.
The main problem is that hardware was more proprietary in those days. You cannot just plug in any 8" drive.
File systems and formatting were different between OSes and vendors, so you need the OS that wrote it to be able to read it (or an emulator).
ITIL is a recommendation. As you mention, implemeting ITIL by the letter is simply wrong. But inventing a system from scratch is beyond the capability of most organizations (believe me, our company tried and failed miserably befoe adopting ITIL). Why should everybody reinvent the wheel?
We use ITIL, and the CM part definitely has saved us from major issues.
And some of the problems we see would have been avoided if the teams responsible had followed the CM process.
The more complex the organization is (we are a truly global company), the more you need structure.
If our company is typical, we update firmware only when needed.
Most servers keep most of the firmware for the entire lifespan.
An exception would be if the OS is upgraded (but even that is unusual).
A common exception is the HP ILO controllers. One reason we sometimes update them is that there are real improvements, ad it does not require downtime.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps access to voting facilities was also a problem with their e-Voting trials. In order to cast a vote electronically; voters needed to receive a polling card.
The ability to receive the card through the mail on a timely basis and follow the instructions would be necessary to participate.
All voters in Norway receive a voting card in the mail, and I can assure you that the norwegian mail system is very reliable as well as the cards being sent out well in advance of the election.
Regarding the learning curve... Norwegians have been able to file the tax returns electronically for a number of years, and in 2012, approx 75 % of those who filed did it electronically. Also we have one of the worlds highest use of electronic banking (I have been physically to a bank exactly once during the last ten years, and my current bank does not even have such facilities. Everything is net based).
So basically, it is reasonable to assume that the results are as presented. Turnout is not due to lack of easy access to voting facilities.
It adds complexity, as it will be in addition to the manual voting system.
There are no problems with keeping only the manual system, while it is impossible in the forseeable future to use only electronic voting.
paper voters have no way of verifying that either, you are simply talking nonsense.
When I vote, I pick a list for the party I vote for, and put it (unmarked) into the ballot box where it is mixed with a significant number of other similar lists. There is no way to track exactly what piece of paper I put in that box. So my vote is anonymous.
by the way increased turnout is not at all the benefit, you not only do know nothing about the system, you fail to grasp what democracy is about. if turnout is a matter of comfort or marketing, democracy is worth a crap.
The aim of this test was to measure if there would be an increased turnout. By the design criterium, the test was no success. As I did not create the design cirteria for the test, I can hardly be blamed if the test used irrelevant criteria?
Any system relies on a certain amount of trust, but a lot more people are involved in a paper ballot. The votes are counted locally, and all the numbers are available online. The paper ballots are kept in case there is a reason for a re.count.
That means to corrupt such a system an entity would need to control a significant number of people. That is a lot more difficult than to fix a centralized electronic system.
The goal of this test was to test technology and to check if easier access to voting would increase turnout.
If you test somethig for a specific purpose, then surely accepting the outcome cannot be a problem?
As for the reason for the low turnout, that is a mixed issue. At least we can now assume that access to voting facilities is not one of the problems. As for the country in question, a few reasons may be a generally high standard of living combined with no major fundamental differences between the political blocks. (I live in that country, and my family all vote.)
There's also the political issues with voting machines
Just to clear this one up: In the Norwegian tests, there were no dedicated voting machines. The voters used their own computers, voting from home. Using dedicated voting machines instead of paper was never an option.
From voting machines
There are no voting machines involved, as the online voting was done from the voters own PC. There is already systems in place in Norway to ensure user authentication (used for filign tax returns etc...), so any issue would be with the central systems. In its simplest form, it is a question of trust.
The problem was that the overall turnout did not increase. So 38% of those who would have voted anyway chose to do it electronically. As developing and maintaining a complex system that is used every second year would be quite expensive, along with privacy issues etc., making it a little more convenent to vote is just not a good enough reason. At least not at this time.
Norway never had general online voting. Less than 10% of the population were part of the tests.
To put it simple: There is a cost with no benefit.
The cost is real money, and the benefit would be increased turnout. Without an increased turnout, there is no benefit. The fact that some people who (most likely) are already voters use the online voting is not a reason to spend a lot of money on the system.
The fact that voters have no way of verifying that the vote is anonymous also contribute to the decision.
As most people live within a 10 minute walk form the polling stations, adding electronic voting is not really important at all.
Why on earth would you need to do that?
Losing a day's or even an hour's data entry is not an option.
If you have that kind of requirements (less than an hour lost data), then you are not looking for just backup/archive. You are looking for a fully redundant storage system.
In addition to the backup system, of course.
For reading, check up on backupentral.com, Symantec.com (Backup Exec/Netbackup) emc.com (Avamar, networker).
I once managed a Filemaker database server (v5), and it has a built in featuer to copy the database files for backup. Real simple. Cannot remember if the database had to be taken offline, as we had users only during normal working hours, but these days that should NOT be a requirement.
OR they could migrate those services to IPv6??
No. Most of the world are not on IPv6 yet. My ISP has only started making it available, and the (global) company I work does not even have a plan for IPv6.
That is true, but what I answered to was that the post used a specific example witout bothering to check the facts.
Using $1 per unit as an example when the actual fee is $0.05 misrepresents the facts, which needs to be pointed out.
When looking at a cost, you have to consider what the licensees get,
By paying a nominal sum per unit sold, the manufacturers gets access to an established market with more or less certain sales due to the widespread use of the technology. Is it not reasonable that hose who have in effect created a huge market for the product also get part of the profit?
I could understand the negativity if the license contributed significantly to the cost of the end product (which is the case for mobile phones), but when the license is so low that it does not really contribute much to the end cost, whaqt is the problem?.
For a cable it is 1% of the sales price (cheap cables) or less (not so cheap cables). For a TV, it is fractions of a percent. Even for a cheap unit like a chromecast unit (got one, it is too cheap not to get one), it is one seventh of a percent of the sales price. Hardly significant...
The "security" feature has a documented workaround, and is there because the components reading older versions have vulnerabilities. It si quite simple to define a folder as "safe" and move the documents there, or to define the folder where the documents are located as "safe". This feature has been ther esince Office 2003, and your IT support people should know this.
If your boss could not open ODF in MS Office, then maybe it is because Office open ODF files according to the standard. The problem is that most of the vendors using ODF have added extensions which are not (yet) part of the standard. Is that Microsofts fault?
When you are writing negatively about OOXML, at least get your facts correct. There is no "Do it like Excel 2007" in there. There are a few "do it like Office 95 Word", but those are only needed to correctly render a few minor formatting features on documents originally created in Word 95. How critical is it to ensure that every minor formatting detail from a document created more than ten years ago is correct?
As for your last paragraph: Even without the spec, you can get the content of any OOXML document. Any OOXML document is a zipped folder structure with the text stored as plain text with XML tags. No risk of losing access to the content. Quite an improvement compared to the old DOC/XLS formats, and for those who remember, the WordPerfect formats (yes, I have tried to decode it).
The return is completely disproportionate to the initial investment. How much do you think it cost to come up with the standard for the HDMI cable? How much do you think is being made worldwide if even $1.00 US is going for license fees?
But what if $0.05 is the fee per cable/unit?
Because that is the actual license fee for HCMI.
Why make up numbers when the actual numbers are available through a simple search? http://www.hdmi.org/manufactur...
Spend the money on a cheap proper projector and use one of the participants' laptop. Just as cheap and actually useful. Most people cannot be bothered to use sub.standard stuff.
Cheap flat HD TVs killed the projector market (if there ever was one). Putting a low resolution projector in a PC will not help.
If I need to view content from my PC, I use Chromecast (and there are probably dozens of this type of devices within a year). Simple and easy, and no need for a white wall to project on and to dim the room lights.
Actually, if the domain admin account is used at all, except in emergency, then the domain is mismanaged from the start.
Your argument is based on the assumption that the price per channel reflect the cost of running it. It does not.
The income for a channel is based on what the market (subscribers, advertisers) will pay. The channel has to create its content based on that income. This basically means that in your scenario, if both viewers wanted only channel 1, they would pay half the cost.
Channel 2 would be without viewers, and would have the hard choice of either creating attractive content to get its viewer back, or simply close down.
There is no law in nature which says that all TV channels have to exist forever. Actually, a lot of them are not needed at all.
Anything from the 70's and the early 80's will work.
Some VAX computers (11/780 series) used 8" floppy to read the boot loader. OSes like VAX/VMS, RSX-11, RT-11 will read/write them. I also suspect that any old IBM computer/OS will read them.
The main problem is that hardware was more proprietary in those days. You cannot just plug in any 8" drive.
File systems and formatting were different between OSes and vendors, so you need the OS that wrote it to be able to read it (or an emulator).
ITIL is a recommendation. As you mention, implemeting ITIL by the letter is simply wrong. But inventing a system from scratch is beyond the capability of most organizations (believe me, our company tried and failed miserably befoe adopting ITIL). Why should everybody reinvent the wheel?
We use ITIL, and the CM part definitely has saved us from major issues.
And some of the problems we see would have been avoided if the teams responsible had followed the CM process.
The more complex the organization is (we are a truly global company), the more you need structure.
If our company is typical, we update firmware only when needed.
Most servers keep most of the firmware for the entire lifespan.
An exception would be if the OS is upgraded (but even that is unusual).
A common exception is the HP ILO controllers. One reason we sometimes update them is that there are real improvements, ad it does not require downtime.